In dramatic footage provided by volunteer aid group Free Burma Rangers, Dave Eubank is seen rescuing a young child from ISIS gunshots in Mosul, Iraq. The rescue was part of a rescue effort following a mass attack by ISIS on June 2, 2017. (Published Thursday, June 22, 2017)

Iraqi forces on Thursday captured the compound of a landmark mosque in Mosul that was blown up last week by the Islamic State group — a hugely symbolic site from where the top ISIS leader declared an Islamic "caliphate" nearly three years ago.

The advance comes as the Iraqi troops are pushing deeper into the Old City, a densely populated neighborhood west of the Tigris River where the al-Nouri Mosque with its 12th century al-Hadba minaret once stood and where the ISIS militants are now making their last stand in what are expected to be the final days of the battle for Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city.

Iraqi special forces reached the al-Nuri Mosque compound and took control of the surrounding streets on Thursday afternoon, following a dawn push into the area, Lt. Gen. Abdul Wahab al-Saadi of the elite force told The Associated Press.

Damaged and destroyed houses dot the route Iraqi forces have carved into the congested district — along a landscape of destruction where the stench of rotting bodies rises from under the rubble.

Teenage Girl Emotionally Shattered After Mosul Fighting

Thirteen-year-old Amna Mahmoud Alo cannot sleep and spends her days in a tranquilizer-induced calm, as fighting in her home of Mosul, Iraq, has left her emotionally shattered. Amna and her father, Mahmoud Alo, returned to their now-empty street in Mosul in April, 2017, after an Iraqi-led coalition retook their neighborhood from IS fighters. "She had strong, strong, strong memory. She doesn't have it any more. Whatever you ask, she just says 'no'," said Alo of his daughter.

(Published Thursday, April 13, 2017)

Thursday's push comes more than a week after Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul's last ISIS-held parts of the Old City neighborhood, with its narrow alleyways and dense clusters of homes.

Taking the mosque is a symbolic victory — from its pulpit, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014 declared a self-styled Islamic "caliphate," encompassing territories then-held by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Iraqi and coalition officials said ISIS blew up the mosque complex last week. The Islamic State group has blamed a U.S. airstrike for the destruction.

After months of fighting, the ISIS hold in Mosul has shrunk to less than 2 square kilometers (0.8 square miles) of territory but the advances have come at considerable cost.

"There are hundreds of bodies under the rubble," said special forces Maj. Dhia Thamir, deployed inside the Old City. He added that all the dead bodies along the special forces' route were of ISIS fighters.

Special forces Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi acknowledged that some civilians have been killed by airstrikes and artillery in the fight for the Old City. "Of course there is collateral damage, it is always this way in war," he said.